Behaviour in libraries

THERE APPEAR TO BE two ways in which librarians approach the question of behaviour in libraries and, in particular, reader behaviour. On the one hand there is the view that things happen instinctively and the ‘correct’ behaviour is discovered without the interference of anybody else—‘things sort themselves out’. If you take this view you would hardly believe the question is worth discussing and would only think about it if very obviously deviant behaviour such as rowdiness, discussed recently by the Branch & Mobile Libraries Group, took place in the library. Compared with the need to sort out specific problems such as those thrown up by computerisation or local government re‐organisation, reader behaviour seems to be of little interest and of no urgency—indeed esoteric—the sort of thing a library school lecturer would be thinking about!